Hi there, Jon, and welcome to planDisney!
The countdown is officially on for your daughter's competition held at The Most Magical Place on Earth! Performing at
Disney Springs sounds like a dream, and I am sending all the pixie dust to her team. While you're at Disney Springs, you'll definitely want to check out the amazing shopping and dining that is there. Or if her team is looking for something fun to do before or after their competition, there are fun entertainment options as well like
Splitsville Luxury Lanes bowling and Cirque du Soleil's
Drawn to Life show.
Jon, let's get into the differences between a theme park ticket with a
Park Hopper Option and one with a Park Hopper Plus Option. Having a Park Hopper Option means that once you've scanned into your first theme park of the day, you can then leave to visit another theme park (Magic Kingdom Park, Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and EPCOT). To visit more than one theme park in a day is "park hopping." If your tickets have a Park Hopper Plus Option, they include park hopping, but you can also visit a water park like
Disney's Typhoon Lagoon, play one round of golf at one of the miniature golf courses before a certain time, or even play on the Oak Trail Golf Course. The number of visits to these special extras depends on the number of days that your ticket includes.
Both of the options are add-ons to a theme park ticket. So, you can't have Park Hopper and Park Hopper Plus options without a standard day's entry. By the way, if your tickets are date-based, you will not need to make theme park reservations for them. However, if they are not (like my
Walt Disney World Annual Pass), you will need to log in to your
My Disney Experience account, make sure that your tickets are linked, and make theme park reservations for each day that you'd like to visit a theme park. Hakuna Matata! With a Park Hopper, you only have to make a theme park reservation for the first visited theme park of the day.
Jon, if you have any other questions about your daughter's upcoming trip, please revisit us here at planDisney.
I'm all ears! Magic always,
LeAndra